


wear my shirt, love, you look good in it

by rayfelle



Series: that one mutant romance [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, M/M, Mutant!Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 03:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9301211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: Harry runs and Tom catches him.The start, the meeting, the beginning of something new.(prequel on how Tom and Harry met)





	

Harry doesn’t remember anything from _before_.

Before the Dursleys, before being treated like nothing. Before he watched his own face change in the mirrors of broken down public bathrooms into something else. There was the _before the Durlseys_ and then there was the _before the powers_ times.

The _after_ that followed, that after was one where he hid from bullies using the faces of different children, stole food from small shops and begged every day to whoever listened to his prayers for his aunt and uncle to never see him change. ( _not that the punishments stopped, Harry just didn’t want them to become worse_ )

“You’re just like my _freak_ of a sister. Disgusting mutants, _plague_.” Aunt Petunia looks down her nose at Harry, her lips pulled into a sneer and eyes burning with hatred and disgust. “You’re no better, boy.”

Harry was two when he was given to Petunia. He is eight when he runs away.

…

The sun is high in the sky; summer heat beats against the back of Harry’s neck and burns his skin red and itchy. People pass him by without so much as a glance – too many mutant children run around with no parents. Too many mutants sleep in the alleys and abandoned houses.

Harry covers his nose and mouth with a scarf he had stolen last week. Something strange is going around lately. A disease that makes the victim weak and leads everyone to death. So far those without powers are the ones to die the fastest ( _the only ones_ ), but the boy takes no chances.

He can feel his mask shuddering. He hides in the bushes, waits for the ripple of faces and colors to pass. A woman screams somewhere close by.

The boy, barely eleven and already wary of life, he shudders and forces his skin to settle. Now a small girl ( _one that had passed by the alley where Harry slept once_ ) peeks out from between the dried out brown of the bush. His light green eyes roam over the fallen man further down the street before he runs away.

Ambulance rings echoes down below. The news report another death that same evening.

…

Harry is thirteen. There has been talk about _The Foundation_ between the homeless mutants. There are whispers about how good the leader is, about their mission to kill all _humans_.

It’s an organization of mutants, for the mutants. It works to bring the world order around. There is a system in the making where the disgusting ones, the freaks and the unwanted are those that hold no power in their blood.

 _It’s an utopia_ , Harry thinks. He doesn’t say it though, because now the walls have even sharper ears and the hierarchy of the streets is unbreakable. He is a child ( _one of the few who survived those cold winters_ ) and he is not strong. Not yet.

“So, Shift, what do you think?” An old man, Binns, who often plays with ice and snow asks Harry one evening. This one is one of the few who still cares, still tries to help those even worse off than he is.

Harry crumbles the hard bread in his fingers and drops the pieces in his steaming soup. “I don’t know. Don’t think they want little brats like me for a war.” There is war brewing, everyone knows. Between mutants, between them and the humans – who cares anymore? Someone will bleed, someone will die. “Don’t care either way.”

Petunia taught to stay out of the way. She beat this survival into Harry’s skin and bones.

Binns swirls the beer in his glass bottle, belches loudly. “Smart choice. Better stay away from all of this mess, might not get thrown in a cemetery _or_ a prison cell if you get lucky enough.” The beer disappears in his mouth soon after, the alcohol pulls the man in the land of dreams.

Harry stays up and freezes in the autumn winds. Sleep comes hard for him.

…

There is a battle raging around him, concrete streets crack open and dirty brick pieces fly through the air. Harry hides in small holes, away from the lightning and the light that break the sky open.

Grindelwald laughs his madness.

Fifteen and there is blood on Harry’s fingers. Not his own, _no_. But a woman he hadn’t known bleeds on top of him. Her eyes are wide open, glazed and unseeing. Thick glasses broken where they sit on her nose. The uniform she wears pronounces her a _Foundation_ member.

“Oh, hello there, _Albus_. You came to play with me again? Oh my, _oh dear_. It’s been _so long_.” Grindelwald coos somewhere above, even higher than the streets. Harry can hear the mocking even where he lies still under the rubble and the dead body on top of him.

Something flashes, too bright and too painful for Harry’s eyes. Albus Dumbledore is the calm in the midst of destruction. “Gellert. I didn’t want to meet you like this.” Sorrow is like a fresh wound in the man’s voice. It drips like water, spills over and floods the ground.

It hurts. _It hurts_. Harry wants to scream and beg for someone to move him, help him pull out the large metal pole that sticks through his side. But Petunia taught better than ask someone, bother someone. _Be a burden_.

Grindelwald continues to laugh and taunt. “Didn’t want to? Well _though luck_ , old friend, since here you are.” The air trembles, the buildings sway. “How is Arianna doing? Last I heard you had her moved to your _sanctuary_.”

Harry pushes the dead woman off. He pulls himself up next, one agony after another. He knows about _The Order_ and how they try to save and to educate, but in the end the manor is nothing else but an orphanage of those strong enough to fight for the cause.

( _a woman named Dorcas had come to tell them, the filthy street rats, about the Phoenix Order, about how they take in those in need and help them learn. Harry sat in the crowd of mutants, wearing the skin of an old woman, frail from diseases and age_ )

“You will not touch my sister.” Dumbledore has lost his sorrow and, in place of that, anger roars like a lion set free and wild.

…

A year later Harry stands near a plaza where crowds of both humans and mutants gather slowly. Dumbledore will stand on the stage soon enough, he will speak of peace and calm, of unity between the two beings that were not all that different. Some of the faces of the _The Phoenix Order_ Harry remembers - distantly and from far away.

Suddenly something cold slithers around the teenager’s wrist and pulls him into the warm side of another human being. Harry’s breath stops and his body tenses, fingers of his left hand reach down to grab onto the knife hidden in the folds of threadbare and worn-out clothing.

“Now, now, _darling_ , it’s just me. There was a bit of traffic, I’m afraid, so I am late.” The man that holds Harry close laughs light and cheerful, his smile a scalpel’s slash against the aristocratic angles and cuts of the handsome face. “I hope I did not make you wait for _too long_.”

Harry bites his bottom lip and holds onto his knife, ready to pull it out and sink the blade into soft and forgiving flesh of another mutant ( _because this man, this man could not be anything else but a mutant_ ).

Chilly blue eyes flicker down to the moment of the shapeshifter’s hand and the man bears his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “ _Now, now_. It’s all _fine_.” The words vibrate along Harry’s skin, sink into his bloodstream and freeze his body like coldest winters never could. The man continues to smile, as if nothing was wrong. “Let’s _go for a walk_ , shall we, _darling_?”

It isn’t a suggestion. It is an order masked as one. The words sing in Harry’s head, his legs move on their own.

Closer and closer to the crowd they move, the man’s hold onto Harry’s wrist a shackle in its strength. But his voice is calm, almost amused with whatever was to go down. “So you see, dear, it seems I will need to leave you alone again soon. _Shame_ , since you dressed so pretty for me today, but alas. _However_ , there is something I would like you to do.”

The pale brown of Harry’s hair covers his face and the sprinkle of freckles across the bow of his nose; the skinny body of a woman not yet reached her thirties trembles in the hold of Harry’s power. He will not give into the fear; his power will not be revealed. But no words come out of the teenager’s mouth, no refusal to act as he is being ordered to.

“You see, I want you to get under that platform, the one that _Dumbledore_ will be standing on. See how it’s not even protected right now? Isn’t that just _convenient_?” The man drumms his fingers along the erratically beating pulse of Harry’s wrist, slides something in the pocket of the shapeshifter’s coat. “And _then_ you will secure that little bomb there. _And leave_. See, an easy job, my dear.”

They stop at the edge of the plaza. The man lets go of Harry, but his fingers move to cup the bony face of the girl that hid underneath her the true face of Harry Potter. His eyes tinge red in the shift of light and the pity rings clear. “Now, don’t go telling anyone. And _be quick_.”

The man is gone like ashes blown away by the wind. Harry’s body moves on its own.

…

Days later Harry first hears of the new side of the mutant war – _Knights of Walpurgis_.

There are whispers on the corners of the streets and amongst the homeless communes about the possible middle way, about the leader that charms and controls his way to the top, to the completion of his goals. They don’t know any names, but an old woman claims she once saw the group leaving a battle zone.

 _Beautiful, that man was_ , she had said in a quiet wonder of an exclamation. Her old and wrinkled hands smoothed down the flier that called upon those who wished to live a new life, a better life.

Harry meets two them soon after. And this time they save his life.

There is a smoldering hand close to Harry’s neck, the _Foundation_ member grins wide and _dangerous_ back at him. “Look what I _found_ , such a cute face. Would be a shame to simply _kill_ you, just like that.” There are sets of puckered scars scattered on the man’s face. “What do you say about some _fun time_ with me, huh? Before I get rid of you, filthy human that you are.”

The man leans closer still, his free hand sneaking under Harry’s clothes and across bare skin. The shapeshifter grinds his teeth and prepares to kick and fight as much as he needs to. But then the _Foundation_ member screams in pain, his blood splattering along the dirty city street and Harry’s front, a large, gaping hole now left on what was the left side of the man’s stomach.

“ _Disgusting_. Smelly Rockwood, didn’t take you for a pedophile as well.” The woman that kicks Rockwood’s howling form away from Harry sneers. Her lips twist into something crazy and _wild_ before she spits in the man’s face. “Grindelwald sure knows how to pick ‘em.”

“ _Enough_ , Bella. Let’s not sink until _their level_ , shall we?” The blond man that comes up next clicks his tongue in thought, his fingers playing with a phone. Suddenly, he snaps his head around and looks Harry straight in the eyes, watches as the young mutant morphs into somebody else in a moment of uncontrolled waves of his power. “You were the girl with the bomb. But you’re _no girl_.”

Bella looks interested in him all of a sudden. The blond man tilts his head more to the side, as if trying to unravel a logic puzzle placed in front of him.

Harry… Harry _snarls_ like an animal at them both. “ _Fuck you_.” He runs, not caring of the blood seeping into the cement and staining his exit.

…

“What do you want _now_? Another bomb, maybe this time under _your_ seat?” Harry raises his chin high, crosses his arms across his chest. His heart is beating fast, an unstoppable _thudthudthud_ against the patchwork of bones and muscles holding everything together.

The same beautiful man from the bombing day sits calmly on the bench before the river, Bella and her blond companion stand ways off together with other mutants of their organization. There are jeers and laughter floating through the air, music from the festival that has taken over the town accompanies the light mood everything is wrapped in.

A day off from fighting and strategies.

“ _Now, now_. It was just a one time thing, nothing _bad_ happened. And that old man did _survive_. Sadly.” The man leans against the weather-worn bench, his pose relaxed and far too comfortable for a cold spring evening. “I suppose that introductions _should_ be in order. Tom Riddle, leader of the _Knights of Walpurgis_. You _should_ have heard of us by now, I believe.”

Harry clutches onto the thin cloth of his jacket, his fingers curl into fists so smoothly. Irritation burns bright, like a supernova, with every breath he takes. “Don’t you know already? With the mind reader on your side and all that.” This had not been an invitation that the teenager was allowed to refuse, Abraxas’ voice had whispered that much in his thoughts hours before.

Tom taps his lips with one long finger; face betrays nothing of the beast that waits underneath. “I do. But I am _trying_ to be _polite_. How else would I get you to join my cause? Threats _do not_ work as well as some might believe that they do.”

“Go fuck a _cactus_ , you creep.” Harry snaps, his skin shudders and the woman melts away for a grown man to take place. The face that settles onto Harry’s bones is one of an aged veteran, scarred eyelids and fire-licked patches of skin. “I don’t _play_ with assholes who _take away_ my will.”

…

The usual commune of homeless mutants is under attack. Because they side with the wrong side, because some choose not to side at all – these choices made and ignored paint a bull’s-eye on them one way or another.

Binns takes down five _Foundation_ men together with him to their grave made out of ice. Harry cries for the old man that deserved better, that taught a lonely and beaten boy how to control his power and how to survive. It hurts more than when Vernon beat him for sins not committed.

There are humans and mutants both breathing their last in this night set on fire. Harry stabs his knife deep in the chest of someone that stunk of tobacco and vomit, the black uniform of the _Foundation_ rips together with flesh and muscles.

There are no masks but his own natural face that Harry bares for this war. Those are his own green eyes that shine with the reflection of the fire’s flames.

Someone grabs the shapeshifter from behind and Harry swings without thinking. Blood once again smears across his fingers, drips between the cracks of his grip. There is a hiss and then fingers slide along the bow of Harry’s cheekbone. Tom carries the look of almost passable pity, of regret for _something_.

“So this is the real you.” Tom speaks quietly, his body relaxed and the knife still snuggled deep within his stomach. “My dear, you are _beautiful_. Especially so when you become like you are at this very moment. A Valkyrie. Freyja, who walks between us mortals.”

A monster does not stop being a monster and a freak does not stop being a freak just because he is called _beautiful_. Harry has learned this lesson far too well. There is too much pain, too much _raw_ despair nestled in the cracks of his soul.

So Harry is not ashamed to cry, is not ashamed to show what the world has made him become. “ _I’ll kill you_. If all you came here to do is _patronize_ me, spout this _bullshit_ about—I don’t even fucking _know_ what about---! I don’t need your useless _pity_!” His teeth are bared, face painted in a war paint of ash, dirt and blood.

Mutant. Harry is a mutant and proud of it. He is a mutant and he is hated. But he is _strong_.

“I came here to save you, Harry.” Tom breathes into the space between them. There is a universe hidden in the way they move then, in the way Tom touches and pulls, ignores the wound and leads Harry away from the graveyard of his only home. “I have decided that I want you. And I _protect_ what is _mine_.”

Come morning _Phoenix Order_ calls this massacre an accident. Come morning the _Foundation_ shows an example of what happens to those who deny them.

And Harry, Harry comes to hate both of these leaders and kings equally.

…

Harry has nothing - just the clothes on his back and the knife in his hands. But the sun still rises and the world moves on. The wounds will heal, the crack mend back together. ( _but is it worth it_ )

“Why me?” The shapeshifter asks loud enough to be heard over the sharp noise of sirens and far-away screams. Something is still burning, something is still breaking. “Because of my power?” There is no such thing as _free_ for a mutant.

Tom drapes his coat around Harry. It’s too big and too warm; there is sooth on the delicate linings and dirt stuck where the stitches lay. “I will not _lie_ and say no. _However_ , that is but a small part of my reasons.” The man steps away from Harry. His hands slide into the pockets of the stylish suit pants.

The clock ticks by, the day starts. Harry has no more tears to cry. His knife clatters on the concrete and his throat feels like sandpaper. “ _Oh_? Well, what’s the bigger part then?” The coat feels too heavy on his tired shoulders.

“I am interested in you. You don’t seem intimidated of me, are not interested in this war of mutants. You are _different_. It is something _fresh_ and _new_ , to me. I’ve never met someone like you.” Tom doesn’t blink as he speaks his _s_ ’s sound more like hisses at times, but the blue of the man’s eyes shines like the sunset hidden behind tall brick buildings. “And you are quite beautiful. The real you, whatever it may be. The you, who is hidden under those masks. The you, who is wounded and bleeding, but still so _powerful_ and _strong_.”

It is the first time Harry is told he is beautiful, in any way at all. It was also the first time someone told him he was worth protecting.

Instead of beautiful sonnets and confessions Harry laughs. His voice breaks and the sound must hurt Tom’s ears. “I’m not joining your gang.”

“I am a patient man, Harry. I can wait.” Tom smiles back and this time, this time it’s real and warm, if just a little bit.

A new day begins.

( _perhaps, he can still find a reason to await a new tomorrow_ )

**Author's Note:**

> I have to hand in my master's thesis draft (or like 1/5th of it done) in two days and I have less than half of it done, so of course I write this instead.
> 
> (my titles have nothing to do with the actual story, as always.)
> 
> The more I wrote this, the more I wanted to write some domestic themed stuff for these guys after they started actually doing the dating thing. Seeing as I am very into this au, I might write it, eventually. Who knows.
> 
> As usual, the powers of the characters featured in the story, new ones added:  
> Harry - shapeshifting  
> T-Ridds - control of human will via touch  
> Dumbles - light  
> Gellert - creation and control of viruses/diseases  
> Abraxas - telephaty n shit  
> Bella - expolsions  
> Binns - Elsa of this au  
> Myrtle (the dead chick) - phases through stuff, like walls n shit  
> Rockwood - makes lava or some shit? idk man


End file.
